Dumping Kinect gives Xbox One 10% extra GPU power

Microsoft announced the Xbox One June 2014 software update will give the console a 10 percent increase in GPU power by making reserved Kinect functionality optional. As it turns out, about 10 percent of the GPU's bandwidth was reserved by the always-on Kinect sensor.

Other than that, the update also adds support for using USB 3.0 drives with a capacity of at least 256GB to store games and apps and makes streaming video services available for free to non-Xbox Live Gold members.

By and far, the biggest part of this update is the 10% GPU boost that developers can use going forward. Keep in mind, existing software won’t automatically run at a better frame rate now. This update simply allows devs to make games that use more of the GPU’s total processing power. It’s possible that we could see patches for existing games, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Likely, this change won’t make a noticeable difference to consumers for months, and will probably only impact new titles.

Even with this GPU bump, the Xbox One still can’t match the PS4. This GPU simply isn’t as powerful as the one inside of Sony’s console, and nothing short of a complete hardware refresh can change that.